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Fears of a bloody summer have become a focal point of New York City’s mayoral race as residents go to the polls in primaries to choose Democratic and Republican candidates amid rising violent crime across the US.

Homicides and other violent crimes that shot up in 2020 are continuing their national rise, and President Joe Biden will speak today about what he “is going to do to help address” rising crime, especially gun violence, “as we’ve seen around the country it is a concern of many Americans”, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said yesterday.

Gun crime has seen a sharp rise in major metropolitan areas, and especially in the nation’s largest city, New York. Shooting incidents rose 73 percent in May 2021 over the previous year, as the Covid-19 pandemic recedes and New York begins to reopen, according to New York Police Department numbers cited by CNN.

This is weighing on voters minds, according to an NY1/Ipsos poll released June 7. The poll found that 46 percent of voters view crime as their primary concern, outpacing affordable housing at 45 percent and Covid-19 at 32 percent.

Democrat Eric Adams, a former New York Police Department captain and president of the Brooklyn borough, has argued he is best-suited to address rising crime rates, and voters appear to be listening.

An Ipsos poll released June 21 found surveyed likely voters viewed Adams as the best candidate to handle the crime increases.

The poll also suggested Adams was leading the pack of 11 Democratic candidates with 28 percent support.

Though far short of the 50 percent threshold needed to win outright, Adams is still well-positioned under New York City’s new ranked voting system, which allows New Yorkers to choose candidates based on preferences, then knocks out the lowest-ranking candidates in several rounds until a winner is selected.

Adams has argued against calls to “defund the police” that gained traction after former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, saying it was a slogan adopted by affluent white people.

Those who support defunding have called for those funds to be diverted to other social service programmes that focus on crime prevention through bettering people’s living conditions.

Black communities do not agree with the approach. Adams, who is Black, has claimed, saying more police are needed.
When popular progressive New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Maya Wiley, who has called to slash the NYPD’s budget by $1bn, Adams released a statement criticising the two for their calls to defund police.

“They are putting slogans and politics in front of public safety and would endanger the lives of New Yorkers”, he said.

But Ernesto Lopez, a research specialist for the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), told Al Jazeera that while “decreased budgets could diminish police capacity to proactively reduce crime” and “some research suggests that the ‘defunding’ aspect can reduce police officer motivation, thereby limiting more proactive policing”, he is “less confident in that this is driving the increase [in violence]”.-Al Jazeera.